Journalism Isn't Dead: More Journalism Projects Getting Funded

from the ain't-dead-yet dept

Last week, in yet another post about old school journalists complaining about the supposed "death" of journalism, someone complained in the comments, saying that the "utter lack of interest" from venture capitalists concerning journalism startups should disprove that there are others out there who can build such a business. That seems like a ridiculous criteria (venture capital interest is hardly a barometer of what works and what doesn't). But, even if we assume that you need to see VC interest, well, then that commenter is wrong also. Someone anonymous pointed us to the recent launch of Patch, a company that is hiring full-time journalists and building hyperlocal community sites and is funded by Polar Capital. And that's hardly the only one. In the last month alone I've had conversations with three different VCs looking at journalism startups and exploring whether their models made sense. Once again, we're seeing that if there's demand for a product (journalism), there will be businesses that will figure out ways to supply it. Not all will succeed. In fact, many will fail. But from that we'll certainly come up with models that work.

Agreed

I have to agree on the TD/Masnick stance on journalism. Virtually every startup's goal is to gather enough clients/consumers so it can sell out to one of the higher tier companies. The goal is, always has been, and always will be a matter of keeping and growing your client base.

It wasn't until the last two years or so that news sites started to even allow commenting, and an even smaller amount actually have noise filtering. Commenting on massive traffic sites without proper noise filtering is useless, as Youtube and Digg exemplify over and over again. Top discussion sites are tinkering with karma and expertise as factors in their algorithms -- these newspapers are so late to the game it's astounding.

Patch should be federally investigated

Patch is dirty. They get paid in advertising money to concoct arrest stories reported by corrupt police departments that are in with the crooked politicians who use patch to defame and destroy peoples name for political retribution. it's dirty and should be under federal investigation.